Computer Tips and Tricks

A lot of times when I am doing a computer cleaning, I mention that they need to buy more memory (RAM) for their computer to give it a little more speed. A lot of times, the memory recommendations we offer, can make the computer 4x faster! That’s more than a just a little! This is why it’s one of my favorite things in speeding up a computer. Why is this happening? Well, it’s becoming common to see computers that were purchased in 2003 still alive and kicking. They just need a bit more power to make them work with the applications we all love now. More hardware memory equals a better computing experience overall. Even though our cleanings help immensely, more memory sometimes can help with what we can’t take care of.

You maybe asking yourself would I need more memory? For starters,  you may have an older computer (5 years old) and it’s been running fine but it’s getting slow. Our cleaning service can get it faster and after our cleanings, our clients are very happy, but how about getting that old computer zipping very fast? The cause of the slowdown is that many times, these computers only have the bare minimum that came factory installed. If you have XP, to run with the big dog programs such as Office 2010, you should try to get your computer to at least 1gig of RAM or 2gig if you want your computer really fast. For the older computers, the RAM is usually very inexpensive and recommended if the computer seems stable. A lot of times, our clients are amazed at the price and didn’t expect it to be that cheap.

Windows Vista is another culprit of low memory. Most factory computers shipped with just 1gig of memory/RAM and that is way under-powered to run Vista. As the complaints are high with Vista, you can help it by just adding in the max memory your computer can take.

If you need help with purchasing or installing, feel free to give us a call!

If you need our help or want a computer cleaning, go to our website:

www.cananet.com

Technorati Tags: memory cleanings

Got another laptop from a customer with a Fake Antivirus that they inadvertently clicked on to startup that looks like they have 1300 infections and malware wanting them to click to a site for more help, or more importantly to at some point steal their personal info.

This one even had popups down in the lower right corner that is showing that the hard disk has bad sectors and needs to be replaced and that the graphics chip temperature is too hot and the motherboard needs to be replaced as well. Ofcouse this was fake, because I loaded HDTune and the drive tested fine and then loaded Speccy and the temp of the graphics was normal. All the person’s files were hidden so it looked like all the files are gone. Enough to make anyone stress out to the max.

First thing was to run ATF cleaner to get rid of all temporary files so I don’t have to wade through those. Could not install Super Anti Spyware locally in normal mode. Had to boot into safe mode with networking, then install SAS. Ran a fast scan first and removed all the malware. After reboot, ran deep scan with SAS in normal mode and removed some more trojans.

Next, I ran unhide.exe from bleepingcomputer.com or from technibble.com to get personal files to show up again. Now I cant see all the original items in the start menu still such as control panel or the “run” menu item. If you right click on start, then properties, > Customize > Advanced Tab > then in the Start menu Items: I click on the “Display as a link” on all the items that I want to show back up such as Control panel, Run, Printers, etc.

To further work on this cleanup, I install updates for Super Anti-spyware, Installed security essentials because the current security essentials is not even visible in the menus anymore even though it’s on the machine!  I got to ninite.com and install all the pertinent updates for flashes, java, vlc, teamviewer, hulu, reader, firefox, cutepdf, dropbox, everything search and Glary Utilities.

Installed My web of trust on firefox and ie and also did WSUS offline updates to get the latest Microsoft updates to a decent point. Did further updates via the Microsoft website.

Looking at device drivers, I also noticed that the ethernet card was disabled, so went into sysdm.cpl > device manager > right click on card > then enable. Now back in business.

The hard drive looked like swiss cheese and since it’s XP, ran jkdefrag on it till it looked good.

One of my favorite performance boosters is to speed up the start menu bar by editing the registry and tweak the menu show delay. I change it to 90Ms. Set it by regedit > HKey_current_user > Control Panel > Desktop > then modify MenuShowDelay to 90 instead of 400. It really has the effect of speeding up the Start menu clicks especially on XP.

There you have have, another satisfied customer.

Technorati Tags: unhide malware virus

Fake anti-virus (AV) software is spreading at such a pace that it could grow past all other types of malicious software. It seems to be everywhere right now. Sophos Software is now seeing 15 fake AV sites a day now up from 5 a day last year. Panda is saying that Fake Antivirus will account for over 30 milion pc infections a month.

The rogue program convinces the user that they are infected with malware when they are not, and the user agrees to install the software to remove the non-existent threat. They look similar to the above image. The user willingly hands over anywhere between $29 and $79, without the bogus software having to do anything that would cause an anti-virus program to intervene. If you do give them money, they still do not do anything about it, which doesn’t even qualify for extortion.

The bad thing is that the programs look legit often using that same interface and basic code that the real programs use. So, if you all of sudden see a hard drive scan that finds you have 139 viruses on your machine, just kill the program anyway you can. If you have questions, just contact me. If you do get caught in one of these scams, the sooner you get help, the better off you will be.

In the past, I have recommended AVG Antivirus (The Free version) for most users that I run into in the community. Add the combination of Malware bytes malware removal tool, and you’ve got a fairly decent arsenal to protect yourself against bad files. But recently, with the dramatic increase of malware and virus behavior on the Interwebs, you might need a second opinion from time to time. I recently ran an online scan from NOD32 to look at a machine that I just did a thorough cleaning on. After this scan, I found 2 more viruses that I missed with AVG and Malware bytes.

I know that it is common to have one tool not find a threat whereas another tool will. But what makes this so appealing is that the NOD32 program does cost $39.99 per year, but you can use the online scan for free. The scanner does download some software to your machine, and if it does find a virus, it will quarantine it and “Hold” it basically. If you do decide to remove that software, then the virus will be released back into your system.

NOD 32 onlinescan

Toptenreviews gave NOD 32 a #4 out of 20 antivirus products recently.

Another worthy review is from Terry’s Computer Tips on NOD 32

Check out this review from Antivirusware also

I guess what I like about the product is that it is much easier on my system than the hog that AVG has become. Give it a try.

This video is about dishonesty in computer repair. I would not charge anything for this problem.

Be wary of Geek Squad, or chain store technicians. Give us a call at 336-407-1782 or visit http://www.mypcnetwork.com

Fake anti-virus (AV) software is spreading at such a pace that it could grow past all other types of malicious software. It seems to be everywhere right now. Sophos Software is now seeing 15 fake AV sites a day now up from 5 a day last year. Panda is saying that Fake Antivirus will account for over 30 milion pc infections a month.

Technically, rogue AV is often hard to detect because the software is essentially a confidence trick. The rogue program convinces the user that they are infected with malware when they are not, and the user agrees to install the software to remove the non-existent threat. The user willingly hands over anywhere between $29 and $79, without the bogus software having to do anything that would cause an anti-virus program to intervene. If you do give them money, they still do not do anything about it, which doesn’t even qualify for extortion.

The bad thing is that the programs look legit often using that same interface and basic code that the real programs use. So, if you all of sudden see a hard drive scan that finds you have 139 viruses on your machine, just kill the program anyway you can. If you have questions, just contact me.

Got a laptop in today that had such an odd problem. The customer said that they rushed the shutdown process and went ahead and hit the power button to shutdown the laptop. When they went back in and powered it on, the touchpad did not work.This was a Compaq (or HP) laptop model cq50-139wm (one of the deals at Walmart).

I installed the latest drivers over at synaptics.com but that did not work. I went to hp.com and got the latest drivers for that machine but that did not work. The device manager didn’t eben show the touch pad at all. The mouse setup under control panel did not even have a listing for the synaptics touch pad driver.

Thinking that it was malware related, I installed atf cleaner, pcfixer, malwarebytes, ccleaner and there was a lot of crap to remove but did not take care of the touchpad.

A lot of sites on this issue were saying to do fn-f7 or some key combination to make sure the touchpad was not turned off. In this case, there is a small push button above the touchpad, that is amber if it is turned off, blue or white if it is turned on. In my case, it was on, but the touchpad still did not work.

Did a system restore back several days but the touchpad still no worky.

I finally came across a site where it mentioned powering the laptop off, popping the battery out and letting it stay disconnected for more than a minute. This did the trick. Special thanks goes to http://forums.techguy.org for that info.

Technorati Tags: compaq cq50, laptop, synaptics, touchpad

Check out this video over at woodywood245 on youtube

http://mozy.com/free?ref=451c76aa

You can use the Mozy backup utility to backup to 2GB for free and beyond that for a small fee. Check it out.

Run MsConfig by going to Start > Run > type msconfig
Then selected startup and uncheck just about all the programs you can stand. If there is a program that is running and you are not sure what it is, you can google it by typing in “process “. Sometime it is obvious what the program is. Most folks don’t need to run MSN Messenger or Quicktime detector or all those programs resident in memory. You can always start them up manually and save your memory. Remember, you can always check the program back on if you need to. Just about the only programs you need to run is your antivirus or anti-spyware programs.

Technorati Tags: msconfig, slow computer, slow pc, slowdown, Startup